Hamilton says car failure caused spin

Lewis Hamilton believes something broke on his Mercedes which caused him to spin during qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Having been improving on his final run in Q3, Hamilton spun coming out of Turn 13 with it appearing to be caused by him running wide on to the kerbs. However, speaking immediately after the session Hamilton said there was a strange feeling with his car and that he's certain something has broken as he couldn't return to the pits.

"For some reason something gave way on the right hand side of the car," Hamilton said. "I was going through the chicane, I got on the power and all of a sudden it just snapped out. Then I tried to pull away and it wouldn't move, so something's busted."

Hamilton admitted the problem was a big blow to his hopes of a strong race in Abu Dhabi but was glad he can still start the race from fourth place.

"This is a very difficult circuit to overtake - being at the front means everything here - but hopefully we can get a good start like we did in Japan or something like that and maybe then we can still challenge for positions. I'm just grateful that at least I didn't drop down too far."

Mercedes later confirmed via Twitter that the spin was caused by a part failing on the car.

We can now confirm that a right-rear wishbone failed on Lewis' car. We hope to repair the damage under parc ferme.